


Lily-white Ties to The Sea

by leafiest_groves



Series: ☆ 𝓟𝓙𝓞/𝓗𝓞𝓞 𝓛𝓮𝓼𝓫𝓲𝓪𝓷𝓼 ☆ [6]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Past Lives, Argo II but ancient?, Blood and Injury, Dysfunctional Family, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Just That One Time, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Past Lives, Quests, References to Arthurian Legend, Reunions, Romeo and Juliet References, Team Argo have kinda always been together, Team Bonding, Tragic Romance, because they kinda die Romeo and Juliet style, discovery of past lives, harpy!Jason, ig theres a biblical reference too?, not quite a noticeable one, or shifters, siren!Percy, the rest are mages, with Elaine, you know the context and so do I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27517390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leafiest_groves/pseuds/leafiest_groves
Summary: Jacqueline breathes easy for a moment then, before quietly drawing her last breath with the taste of Perenna’s lips and her brilliant green eyes, the last thing on her mind when her soul is rended from her body.May god protect.....A tragedy in this life isn't enough to keep them apart. They meet each other in the next life before they realise who it is that they came back to.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase & Jason Grace Friendship - Relationship, Jason Grace & Leo Valdez, Jason Grace/Percy Jackson
Series: ☆ 𝓟𝓙𝓞/𝓗𝓞𝓞 𝓛𝓮𝓼𝓫𝓲𝓪𝓷𝓼 ☆ [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1903603
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	Lily-white Ties to The Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [parker_kingofbees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/parker_kingofbees/gifts).



A young woman stands in the forest, tears streamed down her cheeks, her wide, expressive eyes half shut and red from crying. She's knelt in front of a grave, sobbing into her hands desperately. 

‘Thaddeus’ the stone reads, and it’s rough, just barely put on by Jaqcueline’s scratched hands. She barely manages to give her brother a dignified burial. 

She returns home to their threadbare cottage as a changed woman. She’s out for revenge.

A week of mourning is all she can allow herself. She still needs to feed herself after all; she doesn’t have the luxury to expect her meals to come to her. She pulls on a pair of gloves, tightening her split-fronted skirt over her waist. The wool of her breeches is wearing thin in a few places, and she’ll need to mend it once she gets home. A half veil is tugged over her eyes in respect for her beloved Thaddeus, hiding those eyes so like his own from view.

The door is locked tightly behind her when she takes off, her wings beating in the wind while she scans the earth below her for prey. Her braid whips behind her in the wind, long and blonde. Her mind wanders then, separated from the earthly plane where her misery stems from. 

Instinctively, she thinks of the night she became who is today, the night she convinced herself she could be someone her brother would be proud of. 

_Do you want to live forever, Jacqueline?_

_Her scream echoes into the forest, ringing in her ears. She's backed up into a tree when the harpy bites at her shoulder while hissing in her ears. Nigh on instantaneously, the gruesome scene ends, and she’s left to catch her breath while ruby tears start flooding from the bite wound to soak into her clothes. She doesn’t panic, gingerly reaching out to touch her own ebbing life force, before using it to draw something onto the glinting rocks before her._

_Nam Thaddeum, pro eo._

_For Thaddeus, for him._

_It’s a promise she’ll surely be able to keep. She’s not weak any longer. Her inborn powers have been released in full. She has nothing to be afraid of._

_She’s wrong._

Shaking herself out of her own head, she zeroes in on her next meal, a young fawn alone in a thicket. His mother is dead not 20 yards from him, poisoned by a snakebite. Jacqueline has lost her mercy. 

She dives, careening towards the ground while her body fully shifts to that of a giant bird. She snatches him clean off the ground, sinking her talons into the fawn’s soft fur while he thrashes in a meaningless fight for his life. By the time she lands, her talons are dyed red, and the fawn is breathing no longer. She murmurs a quiet prayer in his name, before making a meal out of him.

Exhausted, Jacqueline stalks up the stairs to her room, pulling the cauldron she’s set on the hearth off the flames. She empties the water into a bucket, stripping to scrub off the stench of blood that’s followed her since her kill. She stares blankly ahead at the July roses that sprout from her window box. They tell her that she’s finally 20 years old, and that she’s alone in the world, without Thaddeus to cut them for her to weave into her hair, without Thaddeus to eat with her and comfort her.

Scowling, she traipses over to her writing desk, eyeing the letter that’s been sitting there for weeks. The guilt left in her dies a quick death. Her brother is gone now. She has no more regrets.

There’s an address in the city scrawled onto it in Lavinia’s familiar writing, along with the name of a ship. 

Jacqueline arrives at the port by nightfall the same day, carrying only a knapsack and some memories. Familiar faces greet her once she turns a corner into a shaded plaza. Jacqueline is no longer bound to her past life and the promises that came with it. There is no more talk of someday finding father and reclaiming her title as a noble. There is no question of marrying into the oligarchy. Jacqueline has nothing left. 

The Renata is a beautiful ship, as expected of Lavinia and Andrew’s handiwork. There’s a lingering quiet that beats down over her however, and she only realises it when she’s alone on the deck after the rest of the crew are long asleep. 

She hasn’t just escaped her obligations and her past fears. She’s abandoned the dreams her brother had for her, all their hopes of an easy, comfortable life. She’s run off to sea with a crew of equally desperate shifters and mages, for god’s sake. She may not ever come back alive. She may not get the chance to be buried next to her brother. 

But the sea gives and takes as it pleases. The sea is that middle ground that drifts between heaven and hell, taunting you both with the promise of unspeakable fortunes and a lifetime of luck, or damnation that seeks to devour you every day of your life. Jacqueline was testing the waters with both feet, with all the reassurance of the name her beloved brother had given her when their mother had died birthing her. 

_May god protect._

Did god protect her? Maybe. She hadn’t died yet, had she. She hadn’t died even when all her living relatives had breathed their last already.

Out here on the sea, far from human eyes, Jacqueline is free to spread her wings and bare her fangs casually. She can smile in the same free way she did with her brother, without the fear of having to bury this side of herself any longer. The storms mirror her eyes, a kaleidoscope of skies that eternally waft through her being. She is well and truly herself, not just unashamedly, but proudly.

Andrew, bless his heart, can’t seem to sleep knowing she’s out on her own. Jacqueline is more than willing to forgive his overbearing nature, she has a rash side that at times pushes her to do things they’ll all regret. The stars are beading the sky overhead, obscured occasionally by a mile of clouds. Silently, she offers Andrew a hand to grab onto, and flies them to sit atop the sails. It’s companionable then, the silence. With Andrew’s arm about her waist and his familiar warmth under her head when she leans on his shoulder, she points out the constellations with all the pride of a cherished pupil showing off their knowledge. Her wing reaches to wrap over his opposite shoulder, and all of a sudden, Jacqueline doesn’t feel so lonely anymore. 

They spend lord alone knows how long up there. Others come to take their shift and make idle conversation, and Jacqueline never feels truly alone in the world for long. She’s through with pointing out half the starlit beings in the sky before she dozes off. She hasn’t felt safe enough to sleep so peacefully in a long time. She wakes up tucked away safely in Lavinia’s room, with the familiar smell of sandalwood and whale oil candles around her.

_May god protect._

It wasn’t god that protected her. Even after the bitter end, it was Thaddeus. It always would be.

They branch away from pirates to something more like traders. There’s only so many times one can burn the flag of a neighbouring dukedom before getting intolerably bored. The call of distant shores is strong, and the money is more than enough incentive for them to put in the effort to get things done. There are of course, lords of other duchies and people of other countries that try and swindle them out of their money, but a harpy, a shifter, and multiple mages are very likely to shut most people up.

Jacqueline is alone by the shores of Thessaly, mourning her brother on the anniversary of his death. She feels that ungodly loneliness creeping up on her once more, pushing her to do something she won’t be able to take back. Regrettably, there’s no one here to stop her, and despite the brewing storm on the horizon making itself known, Jacqueline spreads her wings to shoot off into the sky. 

The sea below her churns as if angry, and her wings pause in their flapping when a voice starts a slow, rolling song. Still aloft due to the buffeting winds beneath her, Jacqueline loses herself to the melody, so unlike anything she’s ever heard. It’s a song in a language she doesn’t recognise, but somehow understands. It tells the story of a lady stolen from her home and taken to an enemy’s stronghold, where her family can no longer reach her. It tells her the tale of a young woman who says she’d give up anything to have her home back, to be returned to the land of her birth, and there is something about it that makes Jacqueline’s eyes glaze over. 

With a shocking desperation, Jacqueline thinks of diving headfirst into an ocean that will surely kill her, if only to be reunited with the brother she’s so carelessly abandoned. However, by some miracle, there is a distraction at an opportune moment, and somewhat guiltily, Jacqueline lands in front of Lavinia moments later, letting her friend and captain chastise her for being out in a storm. She doesn’t know how lucky she is to have gotten away from the sea at that moment.

_May god protect._

Jacqueline lives.

She flutters about the ship like a pet birdie, humming and playfully beating her wings at her companions like a domesticated wild raptor. However, they make a fatal mistake. They leave her alone that night to steer them, and alone behind the wheel, Jacqueline hears a familiar melody, a sweeter one, beckoning a pretty girl to come dance and make merry in a world that treats her unfairly. 

In the rocks ahead of them, Perenna picks at her claws, smirking out at the ship ahead of them. Surely her prey will come to her willingly now. What she doesn’t expect is for the ship to come to a still, for the sails to close, and for a figure to leap impossibly high off the figurehead and over the churning water. Wings nearly 20 feet across fan over her, and for a wild improbable moment, she’s convinced that a fairy’s made its way out to sea. A closer look shatters that theory. The harpy’s face is wild, her eyes crackle with unadulterated power. There’s a mane of blonde hair behind her that the unpredictable winds of the storm have whipped into a frenzy. Perenna’s heart sinks. Harpies are nigh on impossible to lure. The moment she shakes off Perenna's allure, she’ll be out for blood. 

Shaking, Perenna rushes to undo her enchantment, only to fall back, shrinking back into her nonthreatening mermadic form in self defense. It’s no use.

Jacqueline is seething.

“Who do you think you are?”

Perenna wants to wail for her sisters to help her, wants to call for a storm to carry this terrifying avenging angel away from her, all to no avail. The allure is powerless now. 

“You.absolute.idiot.” Jacqueline hisses, almost upset with herself for not realising what was being done to her sooner. 

Perenna looks up in fear, and Jacqueline lets her explain herself.

“I-I didn’t, I swear, I wasn’t thinking, I didn’t know, would never have-” Perenna mumbles, before pulling herself together and turning to face Jacqueline.

“I truly hadn’t the faintest idea what I was doing. I didn’t think there were any of us on board, I’d never have tried to do something so foolish if I had.” 

Jacqueline’s glare narrows, before she whirls around in the direction of her ship. “If you’d hurt any one of them, your blood would be on the water.” Perenna shrinks.

“I understand.” 

She’s mortified, and she looks like a naughty child being told they’ve put someone’s life in danger by spilling kerosene. Her eyes are downcast, and she whines, upset. It’s oddly endearing. 

Sighing, Jacqueline looks at her. “Just-just don’t ever do something this stupid again, alright? I might as well take you with me if you think you will.” 

She absolutely doesn’t expect Perenna to take it seriously. But she does.

_May god protect._

In a week or so everyone is more than acclimated to her. They all fully buy into Jacqueline’s explanation of happenstance, and Perenna serves her duty perfectly. Jacqueline is quickly growing fond of her despite herself. She’s easy to talk to, she’s good at comforting Jacqueline when her fears catch her running, and her voice is the most beautiful thing Jacqueline has ever heard. Talented wordweaver that she is, Perenna lulls their resident bird of prey to sleep in her own lap. Jacqueline shows her all the stars you can’t see from the water, teaches her what they mean, teaches her what Lavinia taught her about finding your way home with the stars. 

Perenna is a siren. A royal siren.

Where nobility rejected Jacqueline, Perenna left them on a whim, of her own will, simply because she believes in love at first sight. Perenna soars for the first time in her life, like the ospreys and gulls she’s seen. She realises why it’s so addicting. It’s the loveliest thing she’s ever felt, clouds whipping past her while she snatches wisps of nimbus from the sky, gales pushing and pulling at her like rip currents, the storms she can summon right before her very eyes for the first time.

‘She flies through the stars on silver wings,’ Perenna writes, in the book Andrew helped her bind last month. ‘she sees so much more than I ever could.’ 

Jacqueline goes underwater for the first time in years when Perenna asks her to. It’s spectacular. Everywhere she turns, there’s proof of earth’s bounty. Coral branches every which way like the skeleton of a fallen behemoth, bursting forth in color like life brought from death. Everything from the deadliest to the harmless coexist, and the deeper she goes, the more she sees. The sight of a huge pair of gold eyes blinking up at her through a trench sets her shivering even now.

Perenna had more than paid off how indebted she was to every member of the Renata by the time the year was up. 

All but for Jacqueline.

It was difficult for anyone to truly ‘protect’ Jacqueline. She was nearly completely self-reliant, and she loved her independence. The chance doesn’t show itself until just before Jacqueline’s 22nd birthday, when the roses bloom orange and cream and they dock in Jacqueline’s childhood home. Jacqueline had the money and the respect to finally restore her brother’s final resting place to what it should have been years ago. She also had the resources to investigate his death in full.

Perenna was useful enough, playing temptress or threat interchangeably, but she never truly gets the opportunity to pay off her life debt until Jacqueline’s family involve themselves.

They had expected the girl to die off soon after her brother’s death. She had no social standing to speak of, she was the bastard child of the Archduke and a countryside Earl’s daughter. Her brother wasn’t there to earn for her or protect her anymore, and he’d been subject to a grisly murder that wouls surely traumatise her. She wasn’t married. She was penniless. She was alone in the world. 

She was alive.

She was _alive?_

_She was alive._

Perenna’s heart stops when they’re fleeing the scene of Jacqueline’s revenge on her relatives. Hebe, the damned wench, gets hold of a crossbow, and by a gruesome turn of fate, her aim is true. 

It’s like watching a hunter’s arrow fell a bird from the sky. Like watching Lucifer being smited from heaven. Like seeing her most treasured person, distant though she seems, leaving Perenna behind. Hebe’s blood flows backward, killing her nigh on instantaneously while Perenna races to the shore and dives into the ocean. 

_Perenna, undying, immortal._

What use is an immortal life when your debt to someone you long for from afar is still unpaid? What use, when the one life you strive for is ripped from you before your own two eyes? The beauty and futility of a mortal life is most desired when it is no longer yours to have. Not youth, not naivety, not ignorance. Mortality. 

Perenna knows in her bones that she is too late. The sea may love and hate like no other, emotion incarnate, but for all it had taught Jacqueline to love, it could not save her.

Perenna cradles Jacqueline to her chest, pulling her to shore between sobs that wrack her whole body. Jacqueline shudders, her beautiful silvery wings broken and bloodied. The arrow that’s cut through her chest comes clean out the other end, dripping blood onto the rainy beach. Her blood is poisonous to Perenna, harpy that she is. Even through the pain, Jacqueline is coherent enough to whisper to Perenna one last time. 

“No-Not the roses..” she says, and there’s blood coughed up between her words. “You remember the lilies? I want them.” 

Perenna knows what she means. Teasingly, in the carefree crass way of young people. they’d all gotten together to discuss how they’d like to be commemorated at their funeral. Jacqueline had wanted July roses back then, to remind her of her brother, and of the coming-of age that spurred her to come to them. Tonight, dying on the shores of her childhood home, not a mile away from her brother’s grave, she changes her mind. She looks up at this wonder, and thinks, ‘I want her to be a part of me when I’m gone’. Perenna thinks - thinks of the water lilies they spent hours lighting up with enchanted crystals, skipping stones along them with their feet in the water, laughing like the pair of lovers they didn’t know they were - and she cries. 

“Promise you’ll find me again.” Perenna says, almost like a small child. 

“Of course I will. I t-taught you how to use the st-stars whenever you get lo-lost, I can use them too.” 

Jacqueline leans up to press her forehead to Perenna’s with what’s left of the strength in her body, and Perenna doesn’t care that there’s poison dripping over her, that her scales are cracking off and dying where Jacqueline’s blood hits. She gently holds Jacqueline near enough for a kiss, and Perenna is too numb to feel the burning. Jacqueline breathes easy for a moment then, before quietly drawing her last breath with the taste of Perenna’s lips and her brilliant green eyes, the last thing on her mind when her soul is rended from her body. 

_May god protect._

Perenna cries out, anguished and heartbroken. She’s overtaken by a sudden feeling, either anger or madness, and pulls the arrow from Jacqueline’s heart, pushing it through her own. The poison of Jacqueline’s blood works instantly, and within moments, Perenna collapses into the breaking waves she and Jacqueline were huddled in. Where Jacqueline’s Elaine-esque corpse, beautiful and lily-like, disintegrates into lightning, Perenna’s melts away into seafoam.

Centuries later, there is still a little grotto of water lilies that hardiy and pluckily blooms today. Huge white lilies that crowd around a sweet secret, a statue of two lovers that they surround with their ancestral roots, blooming into a single blue lily in the center that nobody sees. There’s a tapestry of constellations, gemstones set into the roof of the cavern, each painstakingly placed as if by a dear friend. The engravings of about 6 other names beckon the intrepid quest goers closer.

Their light slowly fades from near painful brightness, jolting Jason. There’s a voice that’s friend-like and familiar, and it playfully giggles in his mind. 

_Tell Perenna I found her. Polaris guided us back due west, tell Perenna I’m here._

Percy blinks dazedly, and while the rest of the crew are still confused - with more memories than either of them to process - he locks eyes with Jason, and there’s something strange in the way he stares that makes the realisation click.

_Jacqueline? Jacqueline, is it you?_

Jason’s voice croaks from being unused, but still manages to say it. “Perenna? Jacqueline found you, Perenna. I found you.” 

Percy looks like he might cry, and Jason already feels his own tears pricking at his eyes. “Yes, you did.” 

.

.

.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> For Parker, who's made me happier whenever I'm upset, and has been quite a rock for me to cling to in this sea of uncertainty.


End file.
